Time to scrap the NFL draft

Apr. 26, 2008

Written by

Sam Borden

Journal News columnist

While the football word will finally find out today which team gets the privilege of paying former Arkansas stud running back Darren McFadden about $20 million in guaranteed money, NFL officials would be better served considering the question that most fans will begin pondering as soon as McFadden's new team is announced:

Is this guy worth spending $72 on in a fantasy league auction?

The answer (which is probably yes) is almost entirely irrelevant because this is not about whether fantasy football has grown to be as big as the game itself (it has) or whether McFadden will actually turn out to be a good pro (he likely will). This is about making a change. This is about a radical switch the NFL could - and should - make to its basic structure that is very similar to something most of the football-loving public already does. This is about adding an element to the NFL that would make it the 12-months-a-year sport baseball has managed to become.

In other words, this is about eliminating the NFL draft.

Imagine it. Imagine a world in which there was no discussion about whether McFadden would drop to the Jets this afternoon at Radio City Music Hall, but rather how the Jets' football operations staff had simply decided McFadden was the player they wanted and made a strong pitch to him, trying to sell him on their team concept and their future and a particularly lucrative contract. Imagine McFadden listening to the Jets' pitch, weighing his options carefully and then, at a suspenseful press conference in his hometown of Little Rock, announcing he was signing with the Patriots because they offered him more money and, seriously, who wants to play for the Jets anyway?

Imagine how much sense it would all make. An open recruiting and signing period, much the same as high school athletes go through as they choose colleges. This wouldn't work in baseball because big-spending teams like the Yankees and Red Sox could literally out-buy everyone, but with a hard salary cap in place, the NFL basically has its 32 teams in the same position as the average fantasy team owner who has a $200 payroll with which to bid on players. Instead of having an arbitrary (and somewhat droning) draft every year, why not do what all of us do in our own leagues and allow for some free-market development? Open up the list of prospects to all team executives and give them a certain amount of time - three months? - to scout, interview and negotiate with the players they think would be the best fit for their roster.

Keep everything else the same - same NFL Combine, same salary rules, same roster sizes - but just end it with a Signing Day in which players and teams announce the agreements they've reached jointly. It would be dramatic. It would be suspenseful. And it would be a lot fairer to everyone than an awkward draft in which players and teams are shoved into relationships that frequently aren't exactly what either side had imagined.

Draft-lovers will immediately cry about how the draft gives poor teams the best chance at the best players, thus maintaining parity. Eliminating the draft, they would say, means no talented players would ever end up on the worst teams.

Anyone who has even a passing interest in the NFL (and is capable of basic addition), however, knows this isn't true. Talented players will end up on lesser teams if only because there simply won't be enough roster spots or payroll space on the Giants or Patriots or Colts to accommodate every player who wants to play for those teams. Just like every other human being who wants to break into a particular industry, many aspiring football players will realize their "dream job" might not be possible, either because they're not as good as they think they are or because the team they want to play for has misjudged their ability. They will then adjust their goals and consider the alternatives (like playing for the Oakland Raiders).

This setup would force teams to do more thorough evaluations of players, while players would have to do their own due diligence on potential destinations, then make some choices: Is it worth it to take less money to play closer to home? Is it worth it to go to Detroit for a little more cash? Which team gives me the best overall combination of money and playing time?

The interplay between player and team would lend itself to tremendous theater, particularly among the bigger stars, as well as a perpetual rumor mill of news that would keep football in the spotlight throughout the spring and summer, much like the Hot Stove League in baseball does during November and December. What NFL executive would be against that?

The other common argument draft defenders offer is that, given a choice, every player would want to play for the big-market teams, leaving the Kansas City's and Jacksonville's of the world on the outside. This, of course, is both a close-minded and foolish assertion. Despite our own provinciality, there are plenty of people in this country who find "small-market living" to be much more attractive than big-city life, not to mention the fact that there are plenty of so-called big-market teams that, perpetual nightlife notwithstanding, probably don't seem like such sweet places to play right now anyway (Hello, Miami Dolphins).

Ultimately, staunch draft supporters should also consider this not-so-insignificant fact as they prepare for this afternoon's insanity: The draft doesn't work. By definition, this system is supposed to give the worst teams in the league a chance to draft the top players available. That is its point. The problem is that teams have almost no way of knowing for sure which players are the best and, at least recently, their educated guesses have been incredibly bad.

A study by economists Cade Massey and Richard Thaler has shown that over the past decade or so, there is an approximately 8 percent chance that a first-round draft pick will make the Pro Bowl within five years. That doesn't sound so terrible until it's mentioned that there's also a 9 percent chance that the same first-round pick will be out of the league within the same time frame.

Since high draft picks must be paid higher salaries, this means that struggling teams very often end up paying exorbitant salaries for players that may or may not actually end up being better than players drafted later. How does that help bad teams get better?

An open signing period would solve that problem, allowing teams to set their own values on unproven rookies while at the same time adjusting their overall pay scales; if they want to pay for potential, they can do that. If they want to only buy low among college players and stockpile established veterans, they can do that, too.

Questions about late-season tanking of games to assure better draft position would vanish, and so too would embarrassing situations like the one Eli Manning created in 2004, when he refused to play for the Chargers after they took him with their first-round pick, forcing them to trade him to the Giants. Great as that turned out for everyone in New York this past year, that sort of "but I don't want to play in San Diego and you can't make me!" outburst isn't exactly a screaming endorsement of the current arrangement, is it?

So let's change it. Let's make a better system, a more dramatic system, a fairer system. Let's put down the draft board and pick up an auction value cheat sheet. Let's do something that will help the NFL get even bigger. Let's get rid of the NFL draft.